“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ophelia said as he piloted us to the door.
“Goodness, deary, wash your mouth. That foot that washed up on Gambier Island a couple months ago? We got a match.”
We took the stairs, but to the morgue, not the courtroom. Smitty was there, along with Dr. Brenner, the city pathologist.
Smitty got right to business. “Please explain to our guests the process of ocean decomposition on the human body.”
“Sharks get most of the blame, but seals, crabs, and other sea creatures also feast upon a corpse. As well, limbs commonly detach as a body decomposes. Over several weeks and months, feet in particular undergo adipocere formation, the fleshy parts turning into a waxy substance no animal will eat. Feet do not normally float, but the shoe has been determined to be buoyant enough to be carried by whatever currents carry flotsam to the shores of Howe Sound.”
“Can you help our dumbfounded friends with an estimate of how long the body – or at least the foot – had been in the ocean?”
“I would hesitate to say on oath, but given the limited extent of adipocere formation, I would suggest a range of several weeks to several months. Some more biochemical testing could be done.”
Lukey took over. “The runner is a men’s size-eight Puma, right foot, which Irene confirmed he had a pair like this, but she couldn’t identify the sock; there are only remnants left. Mulligan’s boots, the pair found with his clothes, were eight and a half – close enough, I guess, given with boots he’d need thicker socks. Missing Persons wasn’t interested in men because they thought it was a lady’s foot – there was a speck of fingernail polish on the big toenail. Hey, who knows what secrets lie in the hearts of men? ‘The professor wore panties.’ Sounds like an Ellery Queen title.”
He gave me a friendly poke, and to keep my balance I had to grab the stack of body drawers. One of them was open. A wrinkled white foot, on its side.
“So I’m thinking about those panties, and I figure what’s there to lose – let’s show Irene the foot. Okay, I handled it badly with her. Maybe I was a little flip …”
“Facetious, Leroy,” Smitty said.
“I make no defence. I couldn’t stop cracking up when she said the baby toe was his. So look at the little toenail. Just a wee, hard pebble of a toenail – that’s how she ID’d it. They’re vestigial anyway – right, Doc? – our toenails, given we no longer hang from trees.”
Dr. Brenner kept out of it. The nubbin was the size of a small mole. I wasn’t about to touch that cold, wizened foot. I was feeling nauseated.
“Definitely Dermot’s right foot, says her affidavit.” Lukey extended a carbon. “Forgive my typing – I was in a hurry, she was kind of stressed out.”
Eight lines, concluding with “sworn by me this second day of August, 1962.” Her signature and that of a justice of the peace. All my rehearsing, all to naught. If he is dead, where are his remains? The last loophole filled.
Even the lack of socks on the riverbank site was explained. Presumably Mulligan brought extra footwear in case his boots got damp.
“Well,” said Smitty, “shall we carry on to court?” A solemn look my way. “Must we really put her through this?”
From “Where the Squamish River Flows,” A Thirst for Justice, © W. Chance
A SIDE NOTE: Those who prefer their humour black may be amused to learn that after the case concluded the foot was returned to Irene Mulligan, at her request, for burial at Mountain View Cemetery. There was even a small private funeral. Eric Nicol had a morbid take on it in his column in the Province. Would there be a second funeral if the rest of the body washed up? Would each part of Professor Mulligan merit its own burial ceremony?
Mercifully those questions have never had to be answered. The size-eight foot with the nubbly little toenail is all that has ever been found of Dermot Mulligan, D. Th., Ph.D.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 1962
Ophelia and I searched for reaction from Gabriel as we related the latest downturn in fortunes. Nothing. Not a flicker. All emotion swallowed, denied.
“Best for Irene that she finally knows,” Ophelia said. “She can get on with her life.”
I chimed in with another uplifting viewpoint. “Doesn’t affect our main line of defence. Suicide. Enhances it, really; let’s us focus on it.”
“Spare the bullshit, Arthur.” Gabriel’s voice was low, monotonic. “It’s another door closed, isn’t it? So my dad was wrong. He was telling me last week Dermot went on the run because he’d done something evil, light years worse than screwing a faculty wife. Dad met him a couple of times, didn’t like him.”
We said we were pleased to hear his father had visited.
“He came with Mom. Finally.”
Then his feelings betrayed him, a glistening in the eye. An awareness, maybe, that his dad, that cynical victim of white connivery, might not have lost the ability to love.
I looked away, at the wall. Burn in hell, Scheister. That complaint seemed somehow, arcanely, directed at me. The wet-behind-the-ears shyster who wanted this murder case for its supposed glory. Who didn’t have the experience for it, the wisdom, the judgment.
I checked my watch – they’d be waiting for us in Assize Court. I called for the jailers to release us from the cell, which seemed to be closing in on me, a Lewis Carroll event.
Gabriel collected himself. “The truth will emerge decades after I’m gone.” Soft, toneless again. “There will be official expressions of regret. Unfortunately, they will say, the system sometimes fails. And then the system will just carry on failing for years, a century maybe, until it collapses under all its dead weight.” Another Riel quote: “A century is only a spoke in the wheel of everlasting time.”
This was not a case of his martyr complex finding new life from an invigorated prospect of death. After our many swings of fortune, it sounded, finally, of the extinction of hope.
We would be seen by the jury as the bad guys if Irene was dragged back into court (I’m sorry, Mrs. Mulligan, but they insisted). In any event, Gabriel felt concerned enough about her emotional health to instruct me to dispense with her viva voce evidence regarding the toe and its highly evolved toenail. In court, as Smitty solemnly filed her affidavit as the final exhibit, I watched the jury, imagined their minds snapping shut now that they had proof of death. Cooper, the foreman, turned to look at a juror behind him. An exchange of nods.
“That completes the case for the Crown.”
The jury went out and Hammersmith puckered his lips, as if offering me a sarcastic good-luck kiss. “You have the floor, Mr. Beauchamp. You may now seek to persuade me, with your usual eloquent oratory, that I ought to direct the jury to acquit. Explain to me, if that’s your position, why you think the Crown’s case is full of holes.”
“There is no evidence whatsoever aside from the lies of Corporal Lorenzo that the accused was at the alleged murder scene. Otherwise, the evidence is entirely consistent with suicide. It is the most rational conclusion available. On that basis, the defence moves for a directed verdict of acquittal.” There was no point wasting more breath.
“Judgment. I have heard ample evidence that if believed by a jury would almost inevitably lead to conviction. I need not review it. The case will go to the jury. Tomorrow you will open for the defence. If that involves a continued attempt to malign our enforcers of the law, so be it. Adjourned till tomorrow.”
“White man’s justice!” Shouted not by my client but his father, his crutch raised like a war club. Celia Swift was weeping beside him. Hammersmith looked coldly their way, then retreated to his chambers.
Smitty motioned me to join him at the gentlemen barristers’ urinals, and over a joint piss he offered to treat me to lunch. “Just the two of us? Mrs. Moore’s close presence would cause me an irregular heartbeat, and Leroy can be hard on the digestion.”
We agreed to meet at Chez Antoine, and I told Ophelia to get a head start tuning up Gabriel for the witness stand. We didn’t want him over
-rehearsed, but on a loose leash, one that could be tightened if he became too discursive or belligerent or wandered onto perilous political terrain. I had little confidence that he wouldn’t pull something. I felt him incapable of tact. The one thing he’d been doing right with the jury was making eye contact, though in a challenging way that might have unnerved them.
Antoine’s was a new restaurant on Robson Street (known widely as Robsonstrasse back then, when it had a vaguely German flavour). But this was French, new, tricked out with Lautrec posters but otherwise attractive, with an upper outer terrace overlooking the sidewalk, a next-door flower shop, and, across the street, Danceland, proudly offering “The Best Twisting in Town.”
Smitty was on the terrace under a patio umbrella, fondling one of his Cubans as he engaged with a sour-looking elf in chef’s whites. “This, Antoine, is the young talent you have heard me praise so unreservedly, Arthur Beauchamp. Treat him like Charles de Gaulle.”
“I spit on de Gaulle.” He didn’t offer me his hand, and swept away.
Smitty explained that Antoine had run a starred restaurant in Algiers popular with the pieds noirs and the OAS. “A fascist bunch, really. Terrorists. He had to flee after independence. Marvellous chef, however. Good food ne sait rien de la politique, however liberal may be one’s appetite.”
He put out his cigar as an amuse-bouche appeared – escargots in tiny pots of garlic butter. A waiter joined us, rattling off the day’s specials.
“While we consider the entrées, François,” said Smitty, “I think we might be interested in salades vertes et huîtres Balzac, and may we double up on the escargots?”
I hadn’t expected this to be a quick lunch anyway. I wondered if Smitty had more on his plate than the shells of his escargots. Probably he was just doing me a courtesy, entertaining the prospective loser.
“But our immediate, overriding need is for a matched pair of martinis, François, and they must be dry enough to burn the throat. Sliver of peel with mine. Would that satisfy you, Arthur?”
“Exactement la même chose, merci.”
“A simple table wine … let’s say the fifty-seven Château Tour Haut Vignoble, which you might open early to let it sniff these lovely summer breezes.”
Nor was it going to be a dry lunch. Those vital items of business attended to, we moved on to the more mundane matter of murder, which Smitty opened by raising his martini. “To justice, wherever she may be hiding.” We clinked, drank. That delicious tickle of juniper on the tongue.
The starters arrived and I nibbled mine while Smitty attacked his, eating, swallowing, talking, eating.
“I have assessed you, young Arthur, as uncommonly perceptive, so you are likely aware that you are dead.”
I choked on my martini.
“I have also assessed the jury – I am rather a hand at this – and they all seem to defer to the foreman, Mr. Ozzie Cooper. He played three games with the Boston Bruins one season, enough to give him godlike status in this idolatrous dominion. And I have learned he has a brother on the federal force. He has made up his mind. Mind you, out of twelve persons good and true, there’s always the chance of a resister – some fierce libertarian distrustful of authority – or a nincompoop nursing a grievance over a speeding ticket. But the eleven other good Canadian burghers, who respect our famed Royal Mounties above politicians, journalists, lawyers, and maybe even Gordie Howe and Tim Horton, will bully the poor fellow into submission. No question of that, old boy.”
Smitty was playing with his cigar, threatening to reignite it. “Another pair of these – what do you say?” He held up his near-empty glass. Mine, I saw, had been drained.
“How much of this is bluff, Smitty?”
“Look here, old chap, I think you deserve better than to lose your client to the hangman. You will not be able to live with yourself. These are still your salad days – well short of your thirties, are you not?”
“Twenty-six in a few months.”
“Truly? All the more remarkable. As I have observed, you have a keen instinct for what we do, and skills rare among many who have toiled for decades in the trenches. You may yet strop those skills to razor sharpness. Or you may not. A death sentence can be particularly devastating to a young counsel, can destroy pride and confidence, and even one’s career – especially, if I may be so bold, if he is haunted by his own irreversible errors.”
Irreversible errors? My hand shook as I lowered my glass. My lamb tenderloin arrived like a reprieve. We tucked into our food in silence but for a few appreciative exchanges about the fare. The empty Haut Vignoble was removed and replaced by a fresh one. Finally Smitty struck a match and cranked up his cigar with a few quick puffs, their exhaust catching the breeze, whipping past my nose. His sigh was either of sadness or contentment, I couldn’t tell.
“Something happened between Dermot Mulligan and Gabriel Swift on the banks of the Squamish. I believe a homicide was the end result of a confrontation. I am not comfortable with Lorenzo’s testimony, but I won’t say he lied. My duty was to proceed without qualm or question to put forward his evidence as it was presented to me.”
“Your case fails if the jury disbelieves him.”
“To do so they will have to disbelieve Knepp as well, who pummelled you quite hard. Part of the game – it happens to all of us. But he’s a polished witness whose square-chinned looks and boyish smile have captivated the ladies of our jury. Miss Kempthorne, the travel agent, was virtually swooning. You lack even a molecule of corroborative proof that he is a liar. Or any of them. And you did it to yourself.”
I had to admit guilt. “I made an unwise deal with Gene Borachuk.”
He nodded; Borachuk had obviously told him about it. My promise not to cross Borachuk about the assault in the Squamish cells had been a bad trade. The backgrounder on Lorenzo had paid off poorly.
The wind corralled more cigar fumes and spun them toward me, causing my eyes to water. I played with a twig of mint on my plate, unable to look at Smitty for fear he’d think I was crying.
“Had you been able to trap Knepp and Jettles in that one grievous lie – and let’s assume it was a lie – you’d have cast a pall on their entire testimony. Your undertaking to Borachuk has queered that line of defence. It’s now Swift’s word against theirs.”
That’s what he meant by my being haunted by irreversible errors. Even if unwritten, a lawyer’s undertaking is like God’s writ; I could no more break or bend it than I could a steel rail. I’d face disbarment for even attempting to renege.
“Okay, thanks for the report card, Smitty. What does all this come down to?”
“It’s already a nasty trial, Arthur. With nasty repercussions. Innuendo, exaggeration, gossip. An internationally celebrated writer/scholar – one of the few we cultural outlanders can boast of. His legacy at risk, his name shamed in death, his lucid, provocative critiques of our moral dilemmas buried in the compost of slander. The abusive ex-principal, the panties-wearing adulterer – all grist for the spiteful flesh-eaters of academia. Eight honorary degrees, had he not? And such a writer.”
I felt a little overpowered by that speech. Weakly: “You’ve read him.”
“Of course. But who am I to speak of our distinguished late friend with any familiarity? You were his student, I believe.”
“I had that honour. In short, Smitty, what are we talking about here?”
“A plea to non-capital murder. Saving the posthumous reputation of a major thinker and writer. Saving the life of a bright but troubled young man. A sentence of life imprisonment, yes, but parole will be available after twenty years. Your fellow can walk out of there in his early forties if he impresses the parole board. Meanwhile, he could take correspondence courses; the penitentiary has excellent programs – he’d easily earn a degree.”
Smitty carried on, a long, hypnotic flow: not only would a life and a reputation be rescued, but also the career of a praiseworthy young talent. Then he evoked the black-robed spectre of The Hammer, who would persuad
e any doubters on the jury to convict, and would weep no crocodile tears as he imposed the mandatory death sentence.
“I can assure you, Smitty, unequivocally, that Gabriel Swift will never plead guilty to murdering Dr. Mulligan. He would rather die.”
“Ah, well, that is too bad. I lost a client to the rope many years ago.”
“I’m aware.” The notorious Emily McCubbin, who poisoned her husband as a reward for his many adulteries. “I studied the transcript.”
“What it does not show is that I’d wangled a life sentence for non-capital. She declined it. Only hanging I’ve ever attended. They do rather depress one.”
It’s your turn, was what I was hearing. Make me an offer.
“Maybe …” I had trouble saying it. “Manslaughter.”
Smitty’s response was to sit back, eyes closed, pondering perhaps, or simply enjoying his cigar.
I repeated to myself that complex word. Manslaughter. Killing without intention, without malice aforethought. The maximum sentence, life imprisonment, was reserved for the most grievous cases. Death by drunken brawl might merit five. Death of a renowned thinker would be more costly. Then I tried to picture myself recommending it to Gabriel, and I flinched. “Possible, not likely.”
Smitty set the cigar in his ashtray, giving it a rest, as the waitress collected plates. “The profiteroles au chocolat are made not here but in heaven. You may find the berries gratin healthier, though that seems such an irrelevancy.”
I said I’d pass. He chose the profiteroles and insisted I join him in a snifter of VSOP Hennessy. I asked for a coffee as well – I was fairly woozy with drink. Smitty, in contrast, seemed perfectly lucid. I wondered what the Attorney General was paying him that he could afford such lunches; this would run to at least forty dollars.
“Manslaughter,” he said, swirling his cognac. “A tough sell.” To his employer, I assumed – Robert Bonner, the Attorney General. “But I must say you showed some very deft footwork with Lorenzo in setting it up. I shot him as he flailed becomes I shouted at him. I rather liked that.” Another swirl, a sip. “Bob would want a substantial sentence, I warn you. Not life, but up there. Twenty, twenty-five years.”
I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel Page 24